Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Smashwords and Wattpad today launched a multi-week promotional feature at Wattpad that showcases 74 books by 72 Smashwords authors in the categories of contemporary romance, new adult romance and paranormal romance.

The promotion will run across three elements of the the Wattpad platform: 1. The Wattpad web site. 2. Wattpad's After Dark app for iOS and Android. 3. The general Wattpad app iOS and Android.

More than 40 million people visit Wattpad each month to read, write and publish. The featured titles are all series starters. Each series starter will
be serialized at Wattpad for the free enjoyment of Wattpad readers. Participating Smashwords authors will receive significant exposure to thousands of new readers, some of whom will go on to purchase the next books in the series at Smashwords retail partners including iBooks,
Barnes & Noble, Kobo and the Smashwords store.

Several bestselling Smashwords authors - including Kirsty Moseley and
Natasha Preston - used Wattpad to reach millions of readers via free
serialization before commercially publishing and distributing
their final books at Smashwords. Not only is Wattpad a great place for new writers to build audience before they publish at Smashwords, it's a great place for veteran Smashwords authors to reach more readers.

My thanks to Wattpad for presenting our authors with such an unprecedented opportunity to build readership. Today's promotion marks a milestone of sorts. Yesterday was the four year anniversary of a Smashwords partnership with Wattpad that began four years ago. I've always been an incredible fan of Wattpad and the people who run it, and I hope this will be the first of many new merchandising collaborations for Smashwords authors across all genres.

Smashwords authors: If you're not already on Wattpad, here's a good FAQ that explains how to get started. Like Smashwords, Wattpad is a free service. Once you have your Wattpad account set up, you can add cross links between your Wattpad profile page and your Smashwords profile page (where readers can purchase your books!). To add a link from your Wattpad account to your Smashwords page, at Wattpad click on your account name in the upper right portion of the screen, then click Settings. To add a link on your Smashwords author page that points to your Wattpad page, at Smashwords click to Account, then click to Edit Profile.

Here's a summary of participating authors and titles, organized by category and alpha-sorted by first name:

Please join me in congratulating these fine authors for their inclusion in this promotion. If you're a romance reader, please share this page with your friends so they can start discovering these awesome indie romance authors!

Scribd, the fast-growing ebook subscription service, today announced dramatic cuts to their catalog of romance and erotica titles.

Effective immediately, I estimate 80-90 percent of Smashwords romance and erotica titles will be dropped by Scribd,
including nearly all of our most popular romance titles. Books priced
at free are safe and will remain in their catalog.

Based on what I've been able to glean, the lower the price and the higher the word count, the better the odds the book will remain. Few books priced $3.99 and above will remain. Scribd is not publicly revealing the formulas for what stays and what goes, probably because much of this is still in flux. They're cutting all publishers and distributors with the same blunt knife.

It's ugly. The problem for Scribd is that romance readers are heavy readers, and Scribd pays publishers retailer-level margins for the books. In a letter to publishers and distributors delivered earlier today, Scribd said:

Dear Publisher

As you know, in starting Scribd, we bore the majority of the risk when establishing a business model that paid publishers the same amount as the retail model for each book read by a Scribd subscriber. Now, nearly two years later, the Scribd catalog has grown from 100,000 titles to more than one million. We’re proud of the service we’ve built and we’re constantly working to expand the selection across genres to give our readers the broadest possible list of books for $8.99 per month.

We’ve grown to a point where we are beginning to adjust the proportion of titles across genres to ensure that we can continue to expand the overall size and variety of our service. We will be making some adjustments, particularly to romance, and as a result some previously available titles may no longer be available.

We look forward to continuing to grow subscribers, increase overall reading, and increase total publisher payouts in a way that works for everyone over the long term. We of course want to keep as many of your authors and titles on Scribd as we can, so we’d love to discuss our plans and how we can best work with you going forward.

Thank you for your business.

Bottom line, romance readers - readers we love dearly at Smashwords - are reading Scribd out of house and home. Scribd's business model, as it's set up now, simply can't sustain the high readership of romance readers. They're not facing the same problem with readers of other genres.

Even after the cut, thousands of Smashwords romance and erotica titles will remain, but that offers little solace to our bestselling romance authors who are already offering low-priced, high-word-count books. The point of the purge is to eliminate the most popular (i.e. most expensive to Scribd since they must pay per qualified read) romance books.

I remain a big fan of Scribd, but today's news is especially disconcerting to those of us working to promote a diverse ecosystem of multiple bookselling options. Romance represents a huge portion of ebook readership, so anything that harms romance authors and their readers is not good for the future of publishing.

While I understand Scribd's need to stem the bloodletting, and I support their decision for this reason, I don't think they found the right solution yet. I think a better solution - one which would strike the right balance between the needs of readers, authors, publishers and Scribd - is to introduce tiered subscription options that would allow moderate readers to enjoy the Scribd service at the $8.99 level, but then offer heavier readers another subscription tier - possibly priced at $14.99 or $19.99 or whatever - that wouldn't break the bank to the detriment of all authors. These additional tiers would still provide heavy readers great value and convenience while still allowing Scribd and authors and publishers to earn their well-deserved profit.

Today's news is not necessarily good news for the authors of other genres and categories either, because most romance readers I know also read other genres. If romance readers abandon Scribd, other authors may see sales declines as well. It's too soon to predict how this will play out.

Our friends at Scribd have made it clear to me that this is just the first iteration of their changes with romance. They're investigating new approaches (which might or might not involve new subscription tiers) that could allow them to reintroduce more romance titles back into the catalog.

There are a few silver linings to today's announcement for romance authors:

1. For the romance titles that remain, these books will face dramatically less competition for romance reader eyeballs, which means the remaining titles and authors will probably see dramatic increases in readership.

2. Free series starters, especially those that contain enhanced backmatter, will become even more powerful (indirect) money-earners because of their ability to introduce readers to new authors and series, which will then drive some readers to make single-copy sales at our other retail partners. Based on early data from the upcoming 2015 Smashwords Survey, series with free series starters already earn 66% more income for authors than series without free series starters. Free works for series by hooking readers who are then motivated to purchase the remaining titles.

3. Scribd is working to ensure the viability of their business. Although I'm disappointed to see most of romance titles disappear from Scribd, I understand their need to tweak the model because their long run viability is in the best interest of all authors in all genres and categories. I'm optimistic that Scribd will eventually iterate their way to a viable solution to accommodate more romance titles. They NEED to do this if they want to become a complete reading solution for all readers.

One solution I'm not amenable to is the option for Smashwords to accept lower payments for each qualified read. To accept lower payments would create a slippery slope down the path to devaluation from which these is no return. There's an argument some subscription services will offer that goes like this: "Earning a smaller amount is better than earning nothing at all." While there's certainly truth to that argument (I do believe that subscription services help authors reach readers they would not otherwise reach), the moment authors and publishers start devaluing their books is the moment that all single-copy retailers will feel forced to lower their single copy payouts, because in the long run if a customer can purchase unlimited books for a cheaper effective price via subscription, the single-copy retailers won't be able to compete. The fact that Scribd and Oyster pay authors and publishers single-copy rates in and of itself acts as a check on such devaluation and provides a level playing field for subscription services and conventional retailers alike.

We've already seen first-hand with Amazon's Kindle Unlimited what happens when authors allow subscription payouts to drop. Authors who agree to the lower payouts earn less per book, and authors who don't agree and who try to earn income with single-copy sales at Amazon find themselves disadvantaged. With KU, Amazon determines the value of each qualified read, and they determine the value independent of the author's list price. In my post last year, Is Amazon's Kindle Unlimited Bad for Authors, I examined some of the likely implications of the Kindle Unlimited model, much of which we've seen play out the months since with lower per-read payouts. Little prevents Amazon from deciding the value per qualified read should be 50 cents or 5 cents or a penny. They can change the rules midstream, as they'll start doing in July when they tie payouts to pages read. I don't necessarily disagree with their plan to tie compensation to readership (I don't like it, but I understand why some do), though it's a reminder that if Amazon decides your 500 page book is worth 25 cents for a full read, they have that power, especially if the indie author community continues to support KU by providing it a critical mass of titles.

With today's Scribd news many naysayers will jump on Scribd and similar subscription services with a big fat, "I TOLD YOU SO!" The naysayers can have their day in the sun today, but I'd caution critics to understand that the story's not over yet. As I blogged in 2013 in my two-part series examining the business models of subscription ebooks, the challenge and the great opportunity for these services is to fine-tune their models to the point where they find that common intersection where the interests of readers, authors, publishers and the subscription services themselves are aligned. Today's news, while painful to many romance authors, is indicative of the fine tuning that is still necessary before the subscription services can prove their model.

If they make the right moves, and if they fully leverage their access to high-quality low-cost indie ebooks, I think these services can succeed.

What happens next for Smashwords authors: All Smashwords authors should remain opted in to Scribd, because it's uncertain which titles will remain and which titles that were cut today will reappear. At a minimum, all Smashwords-delivered titles - even if they don't appear in Scribd - will still be fingerprinted by Scribd's piracy prevention systems. This will automatically prevent unauthorized copies of your book appearing at Scribd.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Ebook preorders are the single most important new tool for indie authors who want to improve the visibility, desirability and sales of their new releases.

Over the last 12 months, ebooks born as preorders at Smashwords earned more than triple the earnings of books that were simply uploaded the day of release.

Ever since we announced preorder distribution two years ago for iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, I've been advocating preorders as an essential best practice for all indies.

Yet despite the amazing power of preorders, and despite the copious evidence that preorders can work miracles, most indie authors don't use them today. Fewer than 10 percent of books released at Smashwords over the last 12 months were released as preorders.

Despite the poor adoption, over the last 12 months Smashwords books born as preorders accounted for 7 of our top 10 bestsellers and 67% of our top 200 bestsellers. When you consider how such a small fraction of books accounted for an outsize percentage of bestsellers, you begin to realize something special is happening here.

Why the dismal adoption of ebook preorders, a best practice that large traditional book publishers have embraced as a no-brainer for years? Aside from the normal education that's necessary (preorders, after all, are still a relatively new concept and option for indies), I think the primary reason for the poor adoption has been that until now, Smashwords required authors to upload their full and final manuscript before they could establish a preorder.

This requirement created a dilemma for our authors. If the book's ready for release today, why should an author hold back the release for three or six months to gain the full advantage of a preorder? You can't blame these authors for deciding to release their book immediately, the day it's ready for readers.

With today's announcement, our 100,000 authors and publishers can have their cake and eat it too.

Introducing Assetless Preorders at Smashwords

An assetless preorder allows the author or publisher to get their
preorder listing up at the major retailers up to 12 months in advance of
the official on sale date. This gives you up to 12 months to market
your book in advance, and up to 12 months to accumulate orders.

Starting today, all 100,000 authors and small independent presses at Smashwords have the ability to upload assetless preorders to Smashwords. No book or cover yet? No problem.

In my companion post today, How to Reach More Readers with Ebook Preorders, I provided an in- depth analysis of the benefits of ebook preorders, along with strategy tips for preorder best practices. These same tips have helped multiple Smashwords authors scale retailer and national bestsellers lists. I encourage you to read it now. Below, I'll just summarize two of the many benefits of ebook preorders:

1. Preorders enable more effective advance marketing - Most authors are communicating directly with their readers over social media as they write their next book. An ebook preorder allows the author to capture the reader's order at the moment they have the reader's greatest attention and interest.

2. Fast track to the bestseller lists - At iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, all orders you accumulate during the preorder period credit toward your first day's sales rank. In other words, you have the ability to concentrate up to 12 months of book sales into a single day for maximum charting potential. Every author wants a high sales rank on their release day, because the higher rank increases the visibility, discoverability and desirability of the book, which then leads to more sales. [A note about Amazon: As I mention in the other post, Amazon treats preorders differently. They limit preoders to a three-month runway, and they don't credit accumulated sales toward the first day's sales rank. The lack of day one credit means preorders will actually cannibalize your sales rank at Amazon. There's more to it than that, so check out the other post for more details].

Length of Runway Matters

A key contributing factor to the two benefits above is the length of preorder runway. The longer your book is available for preorder, the more time you have to market the book in advance and accumulate orders. THIS is why assetless preorders are so critical to a successful book launch. Assetless preorders enable a longer preorder runway because the author or publisher can establish the preorder earlier.

How to Set Up an Assetless Preorder at Smashwords

Setting up an assetless preorder is easy. All you need is a book title, a description, a price, a release date and the category of book. No draft necessary. No cover necessary. If any of these details change prior to publication, no problem. You can change them anytime. To set up a preorder an assetless preorder at Smashwords, simply click to the Smashword Publish page and follow the instructions.

Here's a detailed step-by-step to get you started:

1. Look at your publishing schedule for the next 12 months. Plan to get all firm projects up as an assetless preorder ASAP.

2. Exercise discipline when setting release dates. Some authors meet all their deadlines with the precision and reliability of a Swiss watch. Other authors might require more flexibility on scheduling. Be honest with yourself about which author you are. Either way, you know you want to maximize your runway. Understand that when you establish a preorder, you're making a commitment to your readers, to Smashwords and our retailers that you will deliver the book on time. For this reason, if you're not entirely certain if the book will be ready by your target release date, give yourself a buffer. For example, if you think your book will be ready in six months but you're not entirely confident, set a release date that's eight or nine months out. In other words, add cushion to your release date so you have some extra flexibility. If you finish early, great! You can change the release date of your book from the Smashwords Dashboard and release earlier. Readers will never complain if you decide to release your book early, but they may complain (because they love you so much) if you delay the release. If you need to delay the release of your book, no problem. We make it easy for you to adjust your release date. Unlike a certain retailer who shall go unnamed, if you miss your 10-day deadline, we will not rain fire and brimstone upon your head, nor will we banish you from future preorder eligibility. Instead, we'll send you polite email reminders that you should deliver your book before it's too late. And if you ignore our multiple helpful reminders, we will automatically adjust the release date of your book because we don't want your preorder to blow up. A blown preorder is a cancelled preorder, which would result not only in lost sales but also disappointed readers.

3. All great missions start with a plan. Read my companion blog post, How to Reach More Readers with Ebook Preorders to learn preorder best practices. The post will help you develop your preorder strategy. The tips I share there are proven and effective, and have helped numerous Smashwords authors use preorders for maximum effect.

4. Once you have your release schedule planned, click to the Publish page at Smashwords. In Step 1 of the publish process, simply click "Make it a preorder." If your final manuscript is ready for upload, upload it as usual. If
your book’s not finished yet, or even if you haven't started it yet, no problem. Simply select the "I will upload my final formatted manuscript later"
option to utilize our new assetless preorder feature. If you're concerned the title, description or categorization of the book might change later once you finish the book, no problem! You can change it later without harming your preorder listing. You can choose a release date up to 12 months out. iBooks supports preorders up to 12 months, and B&N and Kobo go a little shorter.

5. You can establish the preorder with or without a cover. Although a preorder with a cover will attract more orders, some Smashwords authors prefer to establish their assetless preroder without a cover at first so they can maximize the runway, and then they'll do the cover reveal later as a marketing event. Once your assetless preorder is established, you can upload the cover later by clicking to Settings in your Dashboard. I don't recommend temporary covers, especially ones that have "Temporary cover" slapped on them. It's better to have no cover at all than to show readers a shoddy temporary cover.

6. Once the preorder is up, attach the ISBN with your Dashboard's ISBN Manager tool. If the book is part of a series, even if it's book one in a new series, attach it to a series with your Dashboard's Series Manager tool. Series Manager improves the discoverability of series books at retailers.

7. Your preorder is up at Smashwords, congrats! Once it's up at Smashwords, our vetting team will review it and approve it for distribution. Preorders receive priority review and distribution. Preorders often appear same-day at iBooks, and within a couple days at B&N and Kobo.

8. Start your marketing (oh wait, no, get to work writing and editing!) as soon as the listings appear. Again, check out How to Reach More Readers with Ebook Preorders for a bunch of ideas, all free to implement, that will help you make your preorder-enabled release more successful. I share some super-simple ideas (like updating the backmatter of your other books to promote the preorder) that don't take much time but will reap many rewards. Okay, now get back to writing!

9. Preorder sales tracking. In your Dashboard's Daily Sales report, you'll find next-day reports of your preorder accumulation at iBooks. Currently, iBooks is the only Smashwords retailer that reports preorder accumulation numbers in advance of the book's release. Nevertheless, the iBooks numbers will give you a good sense of how you're doing.

10. Deadlines deadlines. Your final formatted manuscript will be due to Smashwords at least ten days in
advance of your on sale date. Earlier is always better. If you need to delay the release of your book, no problem. Click to your Dashboard, then click to Settings and move the date out. If you do change the date, do it at least 10 days in advance of the currently scheduled release date. By the same token, if you want to release earlier, we recommend you upload your final formatted manuscript at least 10 days in advance of your new release date.

11. Get the next preorder up. It's always a good idea to have at least one preorder out there working its magic for you as you write the next book. Before you upload your final manuscript, ask yourself if you're ready to
get your next preorder up for the next book. If so, and if
the release date will be within the next 12 months, get the new preorder up now, before you upload the final manuscript of the current project, even if you
haven't started the future project yet. This way, you can start advertising your next
preorder in the backmatter of your current new release the moment it lands in your readers' hands. You always want to be thinking of your next release, and using each new book to drive preorders to the next book.

12. Congratulations! You finished the book on schedule! To upload your final manuscript, simply click to the Smashwords Dashboard and click "Upload new version." As mentioned above, you'll upload your final manuscript to Smashwords at least 10 days in advance of your release date.

The Story Behind Assetless Preorders

This new assetless preorder capability represents over a year of
intense software development here at Smashwords, and over 18 months of private beta testing in
which nearly 300 Smashwords authors and publishers tested early versions
of the capability. I'm grateful to these authors and
publishers because their immediate success with assetless preorders
inspired me and our engineering team to invest the significant time
and financial resources necessary to turn this into a capability we can
offer to every Smashwords author. It was certainly our most ambitious - and most complex - project since the launch of Smashwords.

Thanks also goes to our retail partners iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo for opening up their systems to allow Smashwords authors and publishers to deliver these preorders. And a special thanks to iBooks in particular. We did our first assetless preorder with iBooks almost two years ago, and from that point forward I was bitten and smitten by the bug.

Thanks also to every author and publisher who distributes with Smashwords, because
through our small commission on sales (10% of list) you are directly
financing our mission to bring professional-grade publishing tools like
this to the entire indie author community.

Last but not least, I want to thank the men and women of the Smashwords engineering team. These awesome software developer magician wizards turn my crazy ideas into reality. Like everyone at Smashwords, they dedicate their every day to creating
exciting new opportunities for our authors, publishers and retailers. This project required a comprehensive revamp to our backend systems, and as a result our systems are more robust and future-ready than ever before. For us, it's all very exciting because we're not done creating tools that will give our authors and publishers more advantages in the marketplace. More innovations to come!

Our preorder
systems incorporate a number of features designed to prevent the worst
case nightmare of our retail partners - the author or publisher failing to deliver the
book on time. Such a failure to deliver would cause the preorder to
blow up, resulting in lost sales and disappointed customers. A blow up creates grief for our retailers and their customers, not to mention our authors.
With automated reminders and other fail safes, our engineers
designed systems to protect the mutual interests of our retailers, authors
and our authors' readers.

As you might imagine, we're simultaneously excited and terrified to offer this new tool to 100,000 authors and publishers all at once. Since these systems are still so new, we consider this the next phase of our beta. We look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions for how we can make this exciting feature even better in the future! We also look forward to your bug reports. If you discover a bug, please report it to our service team by clicking either the "?" at the top of any Smashwords page, or the "Support" link at the bottom of every page.

So without further ado, please grab your calendar now and start planning your release schedule for the next 12 months!

If you're planning to publish a book in the next 12 months, this post will teach you how to use ebook preorders to reach more readers. You'll learn why an ebook preorder is an ESSENTIAL component of every successful book launch.

Books born as preorders sell significantly more copies than books that are simply uploaded the day of release.

I recently analyzed 12 months of Smashwords sales data in preparation for the upcoming release of my annual 2015 Smashwords Survey. Here's a quick sneak peek preview of what we found:

7 of our top 10 bestsellers were born as preorders

67% of our top 200 bestsellers were born as preorders

Of our top 200 bestselling preorders, 81% were supplied by romance authors

Books born as preorders represented only 9.8% of the books released at Smashwords during this 12-month Survey period

So there you have it. A small fraction of our titles were released as preorders, yet those titles absolutely dominated the bestseller lists.

The good news is that preorders work like magic. Preorders are the single most powerful book launch tool today. The bad news is that most authors aren't doing preorders yet. Let's fix that starting today. I'll teach you how to make preorders work for your next book release.

I think the reason most Smashwords authors haven't done preorders in the past is that prior to today (June 17, 2015), we required the author to upload the full and final manuscript to establish the preorder. That put authors in the tough position of having to weigh the benefits of immediate release against the benefits of releasing the book later as a preorder.

Earlier today we announced a solution to this quandary - the assetless preorder. With today's assetless preorder announcement, authors can establish preorders up to 12 months in advance without the book. You simply provide us the metadata (title, release date, price, book description and categorization) and then we'll get the listing established at iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

In this post, I’ll explain how preorders work, how indie authors and publishers can integrate preorders into their next book launch, and I'll share proven and effective strategies to maximize the results of your preorder.

What’s an eBook Preorder?

An ebook preorder is an advance book listing at the ebook retailer. Preorders allow readers to place an advance reservation for your book. Their credit card is not charged until the book is released to them when it officially goes on sale. iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo all list assetless preorders delivered via Smashwords.

The Six Biggest Benefits of Ebook Preorders

Ebook preorders give you incremental advantage in the battle for reader eyeballs. Here's why incremental advantages are so important: Ebook sales are characterized by the power curve phenomena, where each incremental increase in sales rank earns the author an exponential increase in sales. A book ranked #1 in a store might sell triple the number of copies of a book ranked #10, and a book ranked #10 might sell double or triple the number of titles as the #20 bestseller.

The more best practices you implement well, the more your sales rank will shift to the left of the curve (learn the most important best practices in my free ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success).

Most indie authors are already well-versed in the necessary best practices of great writing, great editing, great cover design, great distribution and a fair price. It's time that every author add ebook preorders to their repertoire of the most important best practices .

Preorders are like the difference between driving in gridlocked traffic or skipping over to the commuter lane. Preorders are a fast track to greater visibility, discoverability and sales.

Let’s examine the six benefits of ebook preorders:

1. Preorders enable more effective advance book marketing – Most authors, as they're writing their next book, communicate their progress to fans on their blog, Facebook, Twitter and private mailing lists. Preorders allow you to capture the reader’s order at the moment you have their greatest attention and interest. Without a preorder link, a reader who’s ready to purchase today may forget about your book by the time it comes out, or they might lose interest between now and then. Capture the order!

2.Preorders enable advance buzz-building – It’s human nature that things coming in the future are often more interesting that what’s out already. You can’t get any newer than a book that’s not out yet. Preorders allow you to build reader anticipation leading up to your official release. The anticipation will be greatest in the minds of your superfans - those readers who already love your writing.

3.Fast track to bestseller lists – This is the ultimate magic of preorders. All major retailer bestseller lists rank books on unit sales. Their sales rank algorithms weigh sales made in the most recent 12-24 hours more heavily than sales made two days ago or two weeks ago. At iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, all of your accumulated orders credit to your book's sales rank the day your book officially goes on sale. This causes your book to spike in the charts. Since customers use bestseller lists to find their next read, higher-ranked books become more visible and more desirable to readers. This sparks a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle of more sales leading to more sales. Preorders also help maximize your odds of appearing in major national bestseller lists by concentrating a greater number of sales into a shorter period of time. There’s strong evidence a well-timed preorder will maximize your odds of hitting the NY Times and USA Today lists. A strong preorder also increases your odds of appearing in the monthly Smashwords/Publishers Weekly Bestseller list because you can concentrate multiple months of accumulated sales into a single sales month.

4. Same-day availability at multiple retailers – By delivering your book in advance to multiple retailers, your book will go onsale the same day at each retailers. The reason: The advance delivery of your ebook to retailers gives them more time to receive, process and load your book. At or near the stroke of midnight on release day (some retailers release at different times depending on time zone), the book is automatically released to customers.

5. Better reviews - Since your fans and superfans are the most likely to place preorders (because they already trust that everything you write is super-awesome), they’ll be the first to receive your book when it goes onsale, the first to read it and the first to review it. You want your superfans to be the first to review your book, because strong reviews out of the gate attract more sales.

6. Increased merchandising opportunities – If your book is available for preorder, you enjoy more merchandising opportunities. There are two types of merchandising - automated and human-curated. Automated: When readers are viewing any of your books, the store will display your preorder alongside your other titles. If the preorder is part of a series, it’ll appear alongside your other series titles (Smashwords authors: Make sure you’re taking advantage of the Smashwords Series Manager tool because retailers use this information to link your preorder to your other series titles). Human-curated: A strong-performing preorder increases the odds that the store’s merchandising team will feature your book because it gives them confidence to know that your book is highly anticipated by readers. At Smashwords, we actively promote our best-performing preorders to the merchandising managers at our retail partners.

Planning Your Preorder

Think of a runway. Jet aircraft need long runways so they can build up enough speed to take flight. Preorders work the same way. The more time your book is listed as a preorder, the more time you have to accumulate orders for that all-important first-day pop in the charts.

Look at your publishing schedule for the next 12 months and get everything up on preorder today. The longer the runway the better. But even if you only have one week of runway, it still gives you an incremental advantage. Every accumulated order counts!

To understand the critical importance of a long runway, let’s look at how accumulated orders can add up.

If your book is available for preorder for three months (90 days), and you average one order a day at a given retailer you’ll have 90 orders by the time your book goes onsale. At iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, 90 orders will probably land you in the top 100 bestseller list for your genre or category. Five orders per day would get you 450 orders, enough to land you in the top 10 for your genre or category at some retailers. Ten orders a day would get you almost 1,000 accumulated orders, enough to land you in the top 10 store-wide lists at many retailers, and possibly even #1 in some stores. These numbers aren’t hard and fast. It really depends on the competition of what else is being released on the same day. Many of our authors have released with thousands of accumulated orders on day one.

Timing Your Preorder

What day of the week is best for a book release? I can share some considerations to help you make a more informed decision. As you'll see, there are potential pros and cons on different days.

You face more competition on Tuesdays - Most major NY publishers release their books on Tuesdays. Because most big publishers are using preorders as part of their book launches (another reason you should too!), this means you’re likely to face more competition on Tuesdays for the top spots in the bestseller charts.

Saturday and Sunday are the biggest ebook buying days - Weekends are typically the biggest ebook-buying days at the retailers. If you time your preorder to release on a Saturday or Sunday, you’ll face less competition from traditional publishers, and you'll chart higher on day when more readers are searching the bestseller lists for their weekend read.

Sit-down holidays can be slow, but post-holidays are great - Avoiding major sit-down family-gathering holidays for release dates. For example, Thanksgiving and Christmas day, many readers will be occupied with family gatherings. However, the days after holidays are some of the biggest book-buying days of the year. December 26 through around January 7 is typically the year's best ebook sales period based on our past experience. Keep in mind, however, that some ebook stores go into lock-down mode and don’t list new titles during certain holiday days. At Smashwords, we’ll usually start listing these blackout dates at Smashwords Site Updates around mid November so you can plan accordingly.

Sundays and Mondays are good for NY Times and USA Today Lists - Consider releasing on a Sunday or Monday if you want to maximize your odds of hitting a major list such as New York Times and USA Today. I’ve heard these two start their sales reporting weeks starting Sunday and Monday. I'll state up front that it’s tough to find reliable information on how these bestseller lists are compiled, and which retailers report sales to which lists (for example, I know iBooks reports to USA Today and Kobo has stated they report to the New York Times). You should assume that all retailers report to the major lists, so if your books aren't in every store you might harm your chances of hitting a national list.

For the Smashwords/Publishers Weekly bestseller list, early in the month is better - To maximize your odds of making the monthly Smashwords/Publishers Weekly bestseller list, release the first few days of the new month so you can concentrate the prior weeks' preorders and the following week’s sales into a single month. When I look at the SW/PW Top 25 bestseller list for the month of April 2015 for example, most of the new releases that made the list started life as a preorder.

Four Tips to Market and Promote Your Preorder

Simply by releasing your book as a preorder, it's no guarantee of success. To maximize your preorder’s results, it’s important to take steps to drive readers to it!

Here are four marketing and promotion tips:

1. Plan an aggressive, multi-week, multi-part marketing campaign - If you’re planning a multi-week preorder period, plan a different buzz-building promotion for each week. Do contests, chapter reveals, giveaways, and blog tours. Basically, anything you would do for a book launch, start doing it as soon as your preorder is listed. And thanks to your preorder, you can capture reader orders at the moment each campaign element hits. Be sure to promote direct hyperlinks to your preorder pages for each retailer in all your promotions. This makes it easier for fans to click once and then order with another click. If you distribute through Smashwords, this means you’ll want to link to preorder pages at iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Since the preorder listing will go live on different days at each retailer (iBooks is the fastest, often same-day of upload to Smashwords, though B&N and Kobo are pretty quick too), you can make each appearance a cause for celebration and promotion.

2. Mobilize your fans as your street team – As you think about fun promotion ideas, do things that incentivize your fans to spread the word. Here are some potential ideas you might consider, and after reading these ideas you can probably think of a dozen more of your own: 1. Offer a free Smashwords Coupon code to another of your books to any fan who emails you their preorder receipt. 2. Offer a coupon code to any fan who takes action to spread the word about your upcoming release, such as a Facebook post linking to your preorder, or a Facebook share, or a Twitter tweet, or a blog post. 3. Create a “Street Team Acknowledgements” section in the backmatter of your book, and let your fans know you’ll include the names of the first 50 or 100 people who take an action (such as sending you a preorder receipt, writing a blog post or Facebook post, etc). Set a deadline for fans to show and report their support at least two weeks before the onsale date so you have plenty of time to update your backmatter with the Acknowledgements section and upload the update to Smashwords.

3.Offer special pricing on your preorder – Let’s say your next novel will be priced at $3.99. As a reward for your loyal readers who place a preorder, price the preorder at $2.99, and then promise to return the book to its normal price soon after it’s released. This gives readers strong incentive to take action now rather than later. Remember, you want to get as many orders from your most enthusiastic readers concentrated on day one as possible. A reader who purchases your book two weeks after it goes on sale won't move the needle on sales rank.

4. Leverage your other books to promote your preorder – If you’ve got other books out, leverage them to drive readers to your preorder. Once your new preorder is listed at iBooks, B&N and Kobo, update the backmatter of all your other titles so they mention the upcoming preorder. At the end of every book, add a paragraph that tells readers, “{Title
Name} is coming {Month Year}. On preorder now at select retailers.
Reserve your copy today!” Update your book’s navigation so your navigation has a link to section titled, “Upcoming Releases, ”or “Sneak Peek at {Title A}, coming June 2016!” or something similar so your Table of Contents is marketing your preorder. Here’s a blog post and video on how to add navigation to your Smashwords ebook. If you have a sample of your preorder book, like the first few chapters, put that in the backmatter of all your other books (or if you're releasing book #3 in a series, place the sample at the end of book #2 as soon as the sample is ready. Also consider doing some aggressive price promotions of your other books, including FREE promotions. FREE books get about 40 times more downloads than books with a price, so they’re a great method of driving readers to the preorder, even if the book you're making FREE is a standalone book, unrelated to your next book. If you're doing a preorder for a new book in a series, definitely consider making the series starter FREE so you can drive readers into the series and into the preorder (when I release the 2015 Smashwords Survey, I'll share surprising numbers that prove that series with free series starters earn more than series without a free series starter).

Uploading Your Preorder

From a single upload page, Smashwords makes it easy to set up your preorder at iBooks,
Barnes & Noble and Kobo. It's easier than publishing a book.

Book not finished yet? No problem! Select "I will upload my
final formatted manuscript later" to get your preorder up today.

Click to the Smashwords Publish page. As shown in the screen shot at left, in Step 1 of the publish process, simply click "Make it a preorder."

If your final manuscript is ready for upload now, you'll upload it as usual.

If your book’s not finished yet, no problem. Simply take advantage of our new feature for assetless preorders (aka "Metadata-only" preorders) by selecting the "I will upload my final formatted manuscript later" option. Your final manuscript will be due to Smashwords at least ten days in advance of your on sale date.

You'll enter a projected word count for the book and then you'll see several check boxes to mark "I agree." These check box items remind you of delivery obligations. Next, you'll select the release date from the calendar.

Do Amazon Preorders Make Sense?

Amazon treats preorders differently than other retailers. Unlike iBooks, B&N and Kobo which credit your accumulated orders toward your first day's sale rank, Amazon does not. This means that a preorder at Amazon will cannibalize your first day's orders and therefore undermine your first day's sales rank. For this reason, many indie authors who upload direct to Amazon decide to skip the preorder at Amazon and simply upload to Amazon the day of release. By uploading the day of release to Amazon, they can concentrate their sales on the first day to achieve a higher sales rank.

Although Amazon doesn't provide accumulated credit on day one for a preorder, an Amazon preorder can still land in the charts if your daily accumulation rates warrant chart placement. The other retailers also allow preorders to chart based on daily order accumulation rates. And since preorders anywhere enable more effective advance marketing and buzz-building, Amazon preorders still have this benefit.

Amazon allows a three-month preorder runway, so not as much as the other retailers, and they require you to upload either a draft or final version of your book. If you fail to deliver the final manuscript to Amazon by 11 days before your release date, on day 10 they will cancel your preorder and revoke your preorder privileges for one year. It should go without saying that we don't believe in such draconian punishment at Smashwords - after thousands of preorders we haven't banned a single author when deadlines have been missed. We understand that unanticipated delays can happen so we've built safety nets to support you, the retailer and your readers.

It's your call if you do a preorder at Amazon. It's by no means a black and white decision. If you're a veritable marketing machine, for example, the benefit of marketing your book for three months in advance at Amazon might outweigh the downside of a lesser sales rank on day one.

Final Thoughts on Ebook Preorders

Ebook preorders are the most exciting new book launch tool to come along in the last seven years. A well-executed preorder strategy will increase the visibility, desirability and sales of your book.

Despite its amazing advantages, the preorder alone is not a panacea. Behind every successful preorder is a well-planned and well-executed preorder and a passionate author promoting a super-awesome book.

Your objective with each preorder is to make your next book launch more successful than your last. Platform-building is all about incremental steps, building on each success as you go. Whether each new preorder helps you grow your readership by five readers or 5,000, each increase in readership is a stepping stone to the next level. Some of your new readers will become super fans, and super fans will buy everything you publish in the future and will evangelize your literary brilliance to other readers.

To maximize the benefit of preorders, you should always try to have at least one preorder working for you at all times. Of course, if your next release is further out than 12 months, then wait until it's 12 months out before you establish your preorder.

If you’re a new author, even a small number of preorders will help accelerate your ability to build readership. Only five accumulated orders on day one could make the difference between debuting at #100 in your category or at #1,000. Every bit of increased sales rank helps build visibility in the stores.

If you’re an established indie author with multiple books and strong ongoing sales, you’ll have even more flexibility to leverage preorders to the max.

Please share this blog post: Readers have my permission to share
this blog post in its entirety on your blog, website or social media
outlets provided it is reproduced in its entirely and a link is provided
to this original source. Let's help our fellow indies take full advantage of preorders!